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Man gets 25 years in 2009 slaying of Pizza Hut worker

BRUNSWICK | A man who shot a Pizza Hut employee to death in a 2009 robbery attempt will serve 25 years in prison.

Thursday’s sentencing of James Matthew Fuller, 25, brings to a close the oldest case in the circuit, District Attorney Jackie Johnson said.

Fuller, who was to have gone to trial April 29 on murder and robbery charges, decided to plead guilty as lawyers were preparing to take a deposition from a witness, Johnson said.

He pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter, attempted armed robbery, possession of a firearm by a felony first offender on probation and possession of a firearm in the commission of a felony. Superior Court Judge Anthony Harrison sentenced him.

In August 2009, Fuller tried to rob Jeffrey Pennington, 36, as Pennington was closing a Pizza Hut on Chapel Crossing Road north of Brunswick. When Pennington fought back in the parking lot, Fuller shot him in the chest with a .22-caliber weapon, and Pennington made it back inside where he bled to death.

The strongest piece of evidence was a letter Fuller wrote the night he was arrested.

“He wrote, basically, an apology, a confession to the family at the jail,” Johnson said.

The letter became a piece of prosecution evidence prompting challenges by the defense, rulings by several judges and an attempted appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court that helped prolong the trial date, Johnson said.

Pennington’s family gave impact statements at the sentencing.

Although they would have liked to have seen a murder conviction, the family was nonetheless glad of the certainty of the outcome and to be spared a trial, Johnson said.